{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1840", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1840, "subject": "Untrustworthy Narrators?", "messages": 6, "voices": 6, "first": "1999-10-18T12:35:53+00:00", "last": "1999-10-29T12:13:11+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu" }, "date": "1999-10-18T12:35:53+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: (whorl) Untrustworthy Narrators?", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm sending this to both lists, since the general issue of narrative\nreliability seems to be coming up on both lists. I'll try to avoid OBW\nspoilers, which shouldn't be too hard--I assume everyone knows (if you haven't\nread LONG SUN don't finish this sentence :) Horn and Nettle wrote \"The Book\nof Silk.\"\n\n(1) Wolfe and his narrators make it tricky enough for the reader to figure\nout everything that's going on as it is. I generally assume Wolfe's narrators\nmay be leaving out things that I would really like to know, either because they\nare not interested in them or because they wish to avoid thinking about them\n(Severian does more of the first, Weer in PEACE does a lot of the second),\nbut that if they tell me something, it is true, although perhaps not true in\nthe sense that I originally took it to be (indeed, New Sun in general is a\nmultifoliate opening of new levels of meaning to Severian's narrative--and\nSeverian famously says (I paraphrase) \"have I said that the universe has a way\nof making all of our lies come true?\").\n\nEven Nardan (assuming it's him writing!) in \"Seven American Nights\" does very\nlittle apparent LYING to the reader--he deletes some things, of course, but\nhis fundamental narrative honesty is notable in that we _can figure out that he\nleft things out, and even what those things might have been_.\n\nIn the absense of an external source of information or massive internal\ninconsistencies, it seems to me that narrator unreliability is undetectable,\nand the safe assumption where there isn't this strong whiff of madness or \nmisleading intent on the narrator's part is that the narrator intended to\nconvey the truth. Success depends on the access of the narrator to the full\ntruth, of course, and so varies. I assume Severian is basically telling the\ntruth. Inconsistencies in Severian's narrative have always seemed to me to be\neither (A) in some cases mistakes on Wolfe's part or (B) hints that Severian is\nnot living in only one time-line. I'm curious as to instances of Severian\nactually lying (as opposed to being mistaken) that people have found? That\nDrotte/Roche thing is weird, and I've never noticed it... Maybe with \nSeverian(1) it was the other one?\n\n\"Unreliable narrator\" is tossed around too often, I think--even old Humbert\nHumbert in LOLITA tells us mostly the truth. I think Wolfe has very few, if\nany, narrators, who are not _attemtping_ to give us the straight scoop, \noccasionally failing. Severian is open to more intense questioning than most\nin that his \"perfect memory\" should give him an advantage in doing this, but\nthe fact that Severian walks the Corridors of Time, returns from the dead, has\na head full of Autarchs, and may have existed in several alternate time-lines\nwhere he failed that have some impact on his present time-line complicates the\nquestion of when he's actually mixed-up, and when he's telling the truth but\nthe truth is \"inconsistent\" or weird.\n\n(2) Sure the uncertainty priniciple is involved in the LONG SUN narrative, at\na meta-level. I agree that Wolfe is absolutely correct to leave the Dr. Crane\nhypothesis open, but hard to swallow (if we talk about these as being real\nevents, I think that if a sceptic I'd find the recurrence of so many parallels\nwith the Exodus and the Gospels in a world seemingly without either to be \npretty convincing evidence that something very strange was going on) from our\nperspective as readers--but perfectly open to those experiencing the events.\nAlso, this leaves open how much Horn and Nettle made up--and how much what\nthey made corresponds to the real deal. What I'm saying is that Wolfe is\ndefinitely making this somewhat like the composition of the Gospels/the\nExodus story. So, although you are certainly not constrained to think \notherwise by the text, I suspect that we will find, if we see Silk again (be\nquiet, people who've read OBW) that the sayings/feelings/events of LONG SUN\nmatch the Silk we see in any less suspect context very closely. And that it\nis safe to use even events/words that Horn and Nettle could not have verified\nin arguments about \"what really happened\" and what's likely to happen in OBW.\nI doubt this argument can really go anywhere, in that the only evidence we'll\nget is internal evidence from the text (unless we have another LONG SUN type\n\"revelation\" from Wolfe, but then he also squashed the Dr. Crane hypothesis\nfrom that one, as we could have forseen--the danger of revelation) and that's\nunlikely to really verify things one way or the other (unless Silk says \"Horn,\nwhat were you making up that nonsense for?\" but I'm guessing we won't see \nthat scene).\n\n\n\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)\nPh.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department\n8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066\nhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "1999-10-22T01:30:10+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re:Untrustworthy Narrators?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "First of all, welcome to Daniel Fusch! Most of the questions you raised have\nbeen addressed elsewhere in the archives. Note that I didn't say they had\nbeen answered. Actually, for all the smart people there are on this\nlist, there is relatively little consensus about *anything*, but the\n\"miracle\" you mentioned is one of them. Short answer: the eclipse was caused\nby the massive sails of the Hierodules' ship.\n\nRe: the unreliable narrator: Alex and I are not often on the same page about\nmost things, and we are at antipodes on religious matters (I'll be down\nthere in Hell, with alga ), but I think that on this issue he is, by and\nlarge, correct. The testimony of the narrators can, for the most part, be\nrelied upon to be truthful--in so far as they give it. And that is the\nproblem with Wolfe's narrators. Overt lies are relatively few, but there is\nmore than one way to lie, if we count as lying the broader concept of simply\nnot telling the whole truth--the sins of omission. This kind of\nuntruthfulness is where Wolfe's narrators--with a lot of help from\nWolfe--often fail, just as Alex indicated, because they are not interested\nin what is happening (when they obviously should be), or because to tell the\nwhole truth would put them in a bad light (and there is a lot of that). Most\nof the discussion on this list is not about what we are told by the\nnarrators; it's about what we are *not* told by the narrators. And I'm not\ntalking just about the perhaps minor details of the plot that some here\ndecry as trivial, unworthy of discussion.\n\nTo confine my comments just to the Urth cycle, Severian leaves out so much,\nso many critical plot details about major events, that it's hard to conclude\nthat his omissions are anything but deliberate. Most of this, of course, is\ndue less to the narrator's deliberate disingenuousness than to Wolfe's\nchosen writing style, but not all of it. Is it Sev's fault that the\ncliffhanger at the end of SHADOW, the Piteous Gate affair, is never\nexplained? He was there; he ought to know what happened, but it is never\nexplained, and there has been a lot of speculation about it--but not in the\ntext. Why doesn't he question, once he is autarch, the masters of the guild\nabout his origins, about Holy Katharine or many other things which are\nmysteries to him, but need not be? Or Ouen about Catherine? These questions\nseem so fundamental, so obvious to me, that if Sev, when he wrote his\nmemoirs, didn't know the answers to them already and just didn't elect to\nreveal them, for whatever personal reasons, then he is just too stupid to be\nbelieved. So, which is it? Is he that dense, or does he have reasons to hide\nthe truth?\n\nFor another, clearer example of his lack of forthrightness, take the case of\nValeria. Within the fiction of the fiction Sev wrote two manuscripts, the\nfirst ten years after he became ruler. Valeria gets little mention in\neither, but in that first manuscript she is portrayed as a wistful, lovely,\nbut lonely wallflower waiting for Prince Charming to come and sweep her off\nher feet. Instead, she got Severian. In the second manuscript, written at\nthe conclusion of the events described in URTH, Sev doesn't want to talk\nabout her at all, but from the little he does it is clear that his attitude\ntowards her has changed radically; she's a pompous, unfaithful, conniving\nbitch. This change of heart came about, apparently, once he found out from\nOdilo and Eata that Valeria had wed another in his long absence.\nShe was no Penelope to his Odysseus. But his feelings for her must have\nchanged even before his trip to Yesod, because he was quick to bed other\nwomen when he had the chance. This probably played a part in her taking the\nthrust of the poisoned assassin's blade, just as he was complicitous in the\ndeaths of Thecla and Casdoe, and could so easily turn his back on Dorcas\nonce she remembered her past. Sev is definitely not one to turn the other\ncheek; he never forgets--or forgives--what he perceives as a slight. So, his\nreticence about Valeria says more about him than it does her, yet it was his\ncourting-call on her at the end of CITADEL which concluded his first memoir,\nten years later. Any hypothetical reader of both manuscripts could and would\nexpect that the second one would take up where the first left off, or at\nleast elaborate on the conclusion of the first. But it doesn't, at least\nwith regard to Valeria.\n\nWhy write a memoir at all that purports to be a true and accurate account of\none's adventures, bring up wondrous and even momentous events, then leave\nso many of them unexplained? In the context of the fictional memoirs it\nmakes no sense unless their author is hiding something, whether from the\nreader or from himself, which is hard to do when you have a perfect memory.\nIn this sense, Severian is an unreliable narrator.\n\n\nAnd he does lie. In SWORD he claims to be a Grand Master of his guild. Sure,\nyou can argue that the lie was not intended to deceive the reader, who knows\nthat the statement isn't true. But it does serve to show that he can and\nwill lie when it suits his purpose.\n\nRoy\n\n\nP.S.\nRe: My use of \"Caron\" for the name of the old boatman in my recent Dorcas\npost: For those who may not have been aware of it, that name was not of my\norigination. It was advanced by Robert Borski. See Urth archives, Vol.25,\n#31, for April 8, 1999. I would certainly not want to be thought taking one\nof Robert's names in \"vein\", or even vain. \n\nRoy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1999-10-22T15:19:03+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Untrustworthy Narrators?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey wrote:\nIs it Sev's fault that the\ncliffhanger at the end of SHADOW, the Piteous Gate affair, is\nnever\nexplained? He was there; he ought to know what happened, but it is\nnever\nexplained, and there has been a lot of speculation about it--but\nnot in the\ntext." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I have to quibble here and say that the Piteous Gate affair -is-\nexplained, see\nhttp://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0010/0151.shtml\n\nBut I agree that Sev's \"sins of omission\" are a good argument for\ncalling him an unreliable narrator. My rejoinder would be \"...of\nwhich narrative?\"\n\nSeverian is telling the history of the events by which he \"backed\ninto the throne\". Any history has to omit some events, and if you're\nsomeone with perfect memory the number of events you omit must seem,\nto you, astronomical. I don't have the quote to hand, but at one\npoint Severian cheerfully admits to missing stuff out, explaining\nthat if he didn't his story would go on forever.\n\nIt's frustrating for us, because the narrative we want reliably\nnarrated is Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun, but that's not\nquite the narrative Severian thinks he's telling. Perhaps he did\nlater find out more about his mother, and/or Katherine: why should\nhe tell us, now that he's finished his story of backing into the\nthrone? Why record what went wrong between Valeria and himself in\nTUOTNS, when that's personal, happened before the new story he's\ntelling, and in any case none of his readers are likely to have read\nhis previous manuscript?\n\nPeople will argue that you can't glibly separate Sev's 'how I became\nAutarch in my spare time and so can you' narrative from the broader,\nGW narrative, and I agree. But I think from Sev's perspective, he's\njust fast-forwarding past irrelevant events in a history that\nalready contains too many digressions, rather than going out of his\nway to confuse or deceive us." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "William H. Ansley", "address": "wansley at warwick.net" }, "date": "1999-10-23T01:59:52+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re: Untrustworthy Narrators?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"Tony Ellis\" wrote:\nIt's frustrating for us, because the narrative we want reliably\nnarrated is Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun, but that's not\nquite the narrative Severian thinks he's telling. Perhaps he did\nlater find out more about his mother, and/or Katherine: why should\nhe tell us, now that he's finished his story of backing into the\nthrone? Why record what went wrong between Valeria and himself in\nTUOTNS, when that's personal, happened before the new story he's\ntelling, and in any case none of his readers are likely to have read\nhis previous manuscript?\n\nPeople will argue that you can't glibly separate Sev's 'how I became\nAutarch in my spare time and so can you' narrative from the broader,\nGW narrative, and I agree. But I think from Sev's perspective, he's\njust fast-forwarding past irrelevant events in a history that\nalready contains too many digressions, rather than going out of his\nway to confuse or deceive us." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Why should Severian tell us any of the things listed above? Because any\nnormal, reasonable person knows that those are the very things that the\nreader of a tale wants to know!\n\nIt seems likely to me that Severian is not a reasonable nor a normal\nperson. He has not lead a reasonable, normal life, for one thing, so he has\nplenty of excuses. But even allowing for that, he is one of the worst story\ntellers I have ever come across in fiction! He leaves things out (so much\nso that you wonder why he bothers to put anything in), he drops tantalizing\nhints which he never follows up, he's inconsistent and he never explains\nthe things you really want to know. While I don't despise Severian as Roy\nLackey seems to, I don't much like him and I certainly find him irritating.\nIt is a measure of the spell Wolfe can cast as a writer that I come back to\nhis books again and again. I don't claim to understand how Wolfe does what\nhe does, but I understand even less the why.\n\nThe how, at least, seems to have a lot to do with leaving things out. All,\nor most of us, who participate in this discussion group want to know all\nthe things that Severian (or Wolfe) doesn't [want to] tell us. We want to\nknow so badly that we sit here teasing out meaning from the hints scattered\nthroughout the text with tweezers made from the thousands of words that can\nbe seen in the archives of this mailing list. In some cases I think that\nsome of the hints have been teased to such an extent that they have long\nsince crumbled away to nothing, but there is no consensus on which hints\nthese are.\n\nPart of the why seems to be a love of puzzles or at least of setting them\nfor others. Wolfe's books can be justly considered as works that have to be\nsolved as much as read. This invites you to analyze the text in a way that\nmore ordinary books don't, but it tends to lead to the conclusion that\nevery mystery Wolfe sets has a solution. And this is certainly not correct.\nWhile it can be argued that this is true to life, where some mysteries are\nsolved while many others are not and some may have no solution, sometimes I\nthink Wolfe just isn't playing fair with the reader.\n\nSince I persist in reading Wolfe despite this (occasional) belief, I\nsuppose its my problem, rather than his.\n\nWhether Severian is a reliable narrator or not, he is certainly an\nunsatisfactory one by any of the usual standards of story telling.\n\nWilliam Ansley" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jim Henley", "address": "jlhenley at erols.com" }, "date": "1999-10-23T11:27:09+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Re:Untrustworthy Narrators?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "-----Original Message-----\nFrom: urth-errors at lists.best.com [mailto:urth-errors at lists.best.com]On\nBehalf Of Roy C. Lackey\n\n\nWhy write a memoir at all that purports to be a true and\naccurate account of\none's adventures, bring up wondrous and even momentous events, then leave\nso many of them unexplained? In the context of the fictional memoirs it\nmakes no sense unless their author is hiding something, whether from the\nreader or from himself, which is hard to do when you have a\nperfect memory. In this sense, Severian is an unreliable narrator." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It's important to remember that we are dealing with an author of a genre\nwork here. The author is Severian and the genre is, as Tony suggests, the\nmemoir by which a ruler justifies his power and authority. The BOTNS\nparticularly is, in one sense, Sev doing the same thing he later does\nbefore Tzadkiel's dais - explaining why he deserves to be where he is. I\n_think_ that historical examples of the genre can also be reticent in quite\narbitrary ways about their author/subjects' personal lives.\n\nIOW, it makes sense even if the author is not \"hiding something,\" except\ninsofar as one considers any omission to be a \"hiding.\"\n\nBest,\n\n\nJim\n *****************************************\n\"It ain't the knife thru your heart that tears you apart\n it's just the thought of someone sticking it in\"\n -- Graham Parker, \"Protection\"" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Ouroboros The Worm", "address": "ottofaij at yahoo.com" }, "date": "1999-10-29T12:13:11+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Untrustworthy Narrators?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is my first posting here so please be gentle.\nI've done a search of the archives and I didn't find\nthe following point discussed anywhere.\n \nRegarding whether Sev is an untrustworthy narrator, of\ncourse he is. It always bothered me that Severian\nkeeps telling us over and over and over again that he\nnever forgets anything. I read an interview of Wolfe\nwhere he said that he never gave the same hint twice.\nHe said he hated it when writers keep bringing up the\nsame details over and over to make sure the reader\ndoesn't miss it when he felt perfectly capable of\ncatching it the first time. So why does Severian keep\ndroning on about his memory? Because it's a red\nherring.\n \nBut Wolfe gives us a quick glimpse up his sleeve at\nthe end of chapter three of TSOTT. Here Severian\nadmits to being a habitual liar and suspecting his own\nsanity, but that not the truely twisted part. He also\nsays, \"...I who remembered everything could not be\ncertain those memories were more than my own dreams.\"\n \nSo the inconsistency between whether Drotte or Roche\nsays he sees pikes at the beginning of the first\nchapter is probably not an error on Wolfe's part. The\none part of a book every writer is sure to get perfect\nis the first page and that's where this occurs. And\nWolfe hands us another hint on the first page too:\n \"In the recesses of my mind we stand shivering there\neven now. Just as all that appears imperishable [like\nSeverian's memory?] tends toward its own destruction,\nthose moments that at the time seem the most fleeting\n*recreate* themselves--*not only in my\nmemory*....*making themselves new just as our\nCommonwealth reconstitutes itself each morning in the\nshrill tones of its own clarions* \n \nNow unless this is a hint, it's lousy writing in the\ncontext of the story and if I were his editor I would\nhave encouraged him to throw it out. It drags down\nthe story, and as a mere florish, is un-Lupine. But\nactually, Wolfe is telling us that Severian's memory\nreconstitutes, recreates itself every day and so does\nthe rest of the world.\n \nWolfe further explored this concept in \"Soldier in the\nMist\": a soldier who forgets eveything that happened\nto him the day before--all he has is his diary which\nhe reads and adds to every day, but which he can be no\nmore certain is true than we are. He can't even be\ncertain he wrote it, or if someone else added to it.\nIn SITM, Wolfe uses this concept as metaphor for myth\nand history. I think he's doing something else with it\nin TBOTNS. \n \nI think this would be a good point for some input in\nthe way Wolfe uses the theory of \"quantum tunneling\"\nto investigate Being. Anybody?\n\n-Ouroboros" } ] } ] }